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Graduate School Plans Daylong Focus on Energy

Graduate school can be a time
of intense focus, burrowing into the lab or classroom and missing connections
with the outside world.

A series of daylong special events
sponsored by the Graduate School and the Provost’s Office is intended to change
that.

“The idea is to serve graduate students,
to take them out of their silos, to bring them a view of the world,” said
Dmitri Litvinov, interim vice provost and dean of the Graduate School.

The series kicks off with Energy@UH, set
for Saturday, Nov. 23.

Designed to provide graduate students
with a broad overview of specific fields of study, the inaugural session will
be a collaboration between the Graduate School and UH Energy. It will include
talks by University faculty and speakers from the private sector, along with
tours of the Energy Research Park and other UH facilities.

UH has almost 8,000 graduate students but didn’t
have a separate graduate school until it was established by Provost Paula
Myrick Short in August. The Graduate School has streamlined applications and tackled
other “infrastructure” issues, but Litvinov said he also wants to create more
of a graduate student community.

The Nov. 23 session will be a start,
bringing together students from different disciplines – business, engineering, law
and other graduate and professional programs – to gain insights on energy.

“Graduate education and research, much
like the commercial application of such training, is interdisciplinary and
about breaking down silos and that is the goal of this one-day event,” said
Ramanan Krishnamoorti, UH chief energy officer. “UH is a unique institution in
the energy capital of the U.S. that has all the different aspects of
energy-related efforts.”

Attendance will be limited to 100
students; students must be nominated by a faculty member in their department or
college.

Future sessions will focus on health and
other topics, Litvinov said.

Speakers from UH will include Robert
Stewart, director of the Allied Geophysical Labs and the Cullen Chair in
Exploration Geophysics in the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics;
Patrick Peters, professor of architecture in the Gerald D. Hines College of
Architecture; Matthew Franchek, director of the University’s subsea engineering
program, Venkat Selvamanickam, director of the Applied Research Hub at the
Texas Center for Superconductivity at the University of Houston, and Praveen
Kumar, finance professor at the Bauer College of Business.

Additional speakers will come from the
business community, Litvinov said.

He said he asked speakers to model their
talks on the popular TED talks.

“It’s not a technical conference,” he said. Instead,
it is about broadening students’ horizons.

“If we can get a physics student to meet
an economics student, that’s a success,” Litvinov said. “They’re both working
in energy. They’re building a network. I think it’s extremely important for their
professional development, their life development.